In these days, a news item can get around at lightning speed, if people think it’s worth talking about. But even in the days of Jesus, news was spread at a pretty good pace by word of mouth. Today we sit at our computers or with our thumbs on our phone screens, but back then people got out into the marketplace and they talked. They looked for news of what was happening in the world that might impact their lives, and so word of Jesus spread all throughout Galilee.
Yet, from Luke’s account, we haven’t much of an idea what they might have been saying about Jesus. We only know that he has been baptized, and that he spent 40 days in the wilderness as a time of preparation. It is possible that this was all anyone knew as they talked about him through the surrounding Galilean countryside. And so they were curious. What is this man about? For what purpose did he spend 40 days and nights in the wilderness? What is he intending to say, to do among us?
This territory was home for Jesus. He was raised in the Galilee, specifically the town of Nazareth. So, eventually he made his way back there, to the place where he had been brought up, as Luke says.
His pattern, we are told, was to go into the synagogue of every village he entered, and so this is how he came to be in the Nazareth synagogue on the sabbath. He was invited to read and teach from the scriptures; he opened the scroll to the prophet Isaiah and began to read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
This was, evidently, a choice that Jesus made in selecting these verses: To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Now, it may be that the people in attendance heard these words as a soothing balm. “The year of the Lord’s favor” – now that sounds nice. It sounds like hope, it sounds like relief, the fulfillment of promise. It may be that you hear these words like a warm soft blanket wrapped around you. But, in reality, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor meant something quite specific. Isaiah was referring to the Year of Jubilee.
We can read about the Year of Jubilee in the book of Leviticus, where much of the law of Moses is delineated. Leviticus gives much space and attention to the laws of sabbath.
What you and I know about sabbath is what we remember from the Ten Commandments: Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. We have learned that the seventh day is designated as a day of rest. Which we may or may not pay any attention to, although I believe we all understand in some way that rest is essential for human beings, even if we do resist it.
What we may not know, though, is that the concept of rest, and the pattern of seven, extends well beyond this one commandment. In Leviticus Chapter 25, it is written that the land should be given a rest every seven years, to lie fallow for a year. It is good for the land and consequently good for all of life. Modern farming practices have shown us how land can be exhausted, depleted, less nourishing for life. Some farmers have realized that letting their fields lie fallow is a sensible practice.
During this year of sabbath for the land, the people and their animals are permitted to eat whatever the land produces on its own. And they are, of course, encouraged to store what they can in the previous year to see them through the sabbath year. This is the commandment of God. And the promise is that there will be enough.
The pattern of seven continues as we next hear about the “Sabbath of Sabbaths” – the Year of Jubilee. After seven Sabbath years, so this would occur every 50th year. The Jubilee combines a time of sabbath rest, a time of homecoming, and a time of liberation. The land is to lie fallow, as it does in the Sabbath year, and each Israelite is to return to their ancestral land and clan. Debts are to be forgiven. Israelite slaves are to be set free, and land is to be returned to its original owners or their descendants.
What this means is that, if a person falls on hard times and is forced to sell his land or himself to pay off debts, the sale is not permanent. Both land and people are set free in the Jubilee .
The Year of Jubilee is about forgiveness, about restitution, about restoration. It is a massive reset button that God has commanded to be enacted, about once every generation, for the sake of all creation.
Some would call this radical, but that does not make it wrong. Some would call it irrelevant because we cannot point to any evidence that Israel actually practiced this law as it is prescribed. However, that doesn’t make it any less relevant than the command to love God and love your neighbor.
In our Bible study this past Thursday, as we began our journey through the Gospel of Luke, we talked about how the texts again and again seem to proclaim a kind of divine intention to level things out. It is celebrated by Mary in her song; it is proclaimed by John the Baptist; and now it comes from Jesus himself, as he reads from the prophet. Then he sits down to teach, and he begins with this: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
I suppose he is telling them just what his purpose is. He is telling us as well.
I realize this is a lot to absorb, and if you are inclined to reject the notion out of hand, I ask you to keep an open mind and heart to what Jesus is saying.
We call Jesus Christ our Savior, the author of our salvation. Salvation has many different manifestations; it means much more than checking into heaven when we die. If we pay attention when we read in the scriptures we will see that much of the time they are speaking of salvation in this world, in this life. As Jesus said in the synagogue that sabbath day, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
These words might have fallen on the ears of his hearers as a healing balm – good news for the poor, release to the captives, freedom for the oppressed – because they lived under the power of the Roman Empire. It was their lived experience.
When there is great disparity between the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, there is also great suffering. None of which, we know, is the will of God. Yet, God sees the suffering and chooses to address it, by the law and the prophets. And Jesus. The year of jubilee might never have been practiced as it is written. But we don’t dismiss it, because it sheds light on the quality of God’s mercy, which is great.
The words Jesus spoke in the synagogue that day are sometimes called his inaugural address. It is how he chose to define his mission, proclaim his purpose. And it follows that as the church, the body of Christ, it must be our purpose as well. To work for these values he proclaims. To understand that the gifts we have received are meant to be shared. Everything – from love and forgiveness down to our daily bread – these are all gifts meant to be shared again and again and again.
It may be helpful for us to see ourselves as embodying both rich and poor. Each one of us is poor in some ways and rich in others. And so, in God’s eyes, we each are meant to be both givers and receivers. The economy of Jesus is not a trickle-down theory, but a never-ending circle.
Where we give, and we receive, and the circle spreads ever outward.
